If you grew up in the 90s or 00s, you probably remember watching Full House at some point, whether it was while it aired weekly during the TGIF lineup or when it was sandwiched between The George Lopez Show and The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air on Nick at Nite. Or, perhaps you missed the series entirely and were introduced to it through its 2016 sequel, Fuller House. Either way, you were introduced to the charming, idealistic family of the Tanners and all of their life lessons.

Though, there is a far more interesting character in the series, and that is Kimmy Gibbler (Andrea Barber). Kimmy Gibbler was with the Tanners so often that she might as well have been family, even if Danny (Bob Saget), Jesse (John Stamos), Joey (Dave Coulier), and Stephanie (Jodie Sweetin) didn’t always treat her that way. She was unique, loyal, and much smarter than people gave her credit for, and this personality followed her to Fuller House, where she was an eccentric but caring and always present mother and a loyal friend to both Stephanie and D.J. (Candace Cameron Bure). Despite her bright presence breaking up the picture-perfect monotony of the show, Kimmy wasn't exactly treated kindly in Full House — she was constantly portrayed as an annoyance to the Tanner family, framed as gross and weird, and often seen as the butt of the joke in some brutal scenes. Fuller House didn’t try to fix this. In fact, they upped the ante by giving her a rather unstable relationship and often depicting her as stupid.

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The Way the Tanners Treat Kimmy in 'Full House' Isn't Funny — It's Cruel

Andrea Barber as Kimmy Gibbler on Full House
Image via ABC

From Episode 1 of Full House, it’s clear that the only Tanner who likes Kimmy is D.J. The family groans and complains each time she comes over. Danny’s annoyed “Gibbler” became a humorous catchphrase, and Kimmy's "smelly feet" served as a running joke. They often tell her to go home, and on one occasion, Danny actually bans D.J. from seeing her due to her hand in breaking the family TV (but he takes it back once she watches his kids, so it’s fine! Right?) He also often mentions how Kimmy is a bad influence on D.J. due to her poor grades and recklessness, though we’re shown throughout the series that Kimmy is actually an incredibly reliable, kind, and good friend.

Danny isn’t the only perpetrator, either. Jesse is often mean to Kimmy and absolutely sees her in a bad light, as evidenced by the Season 8 episode “Making Out is Hard to Do,” in which he’s married to Kimmy in a terrible nightmare. There’s a lot to unpack there when you consider Kimmy’s age in the episode and how her being married to an adult man was played for laughs, but for the purposes of this article, it really highlights his opinion of her as a literal nightmare. Another good example is how Jesse speaks to her in the Season 7 episode “Another Opening Another No Show,” where Kimmy’s horrible crime was putting her own spin on her Smash Club uniform and Jesse snapped at and insulted her. He apologizes later in the episode, and it’s one of the rare moments we get to see a vulnerable side to Kimmy, but it doesn’t really seem to change the way he treats her.

Even though Danny stops outright asking D.J. to find “new” or “better” friends around Season 6, he does admit that he means every word he says about her being annoying, disgusting, and obnoxious. Kimmy, in Full House, is a child and eventually a teenager. Though she never shows it and often has a quippy comeback, those words coming from people she considers family are extremely hurtful, especially when considering Kimmy’s seemingly turbulent home life.

Throughout the 8 seasons, we catch small glimpses of Kimmy’s life at home with her dialogue. She mentions that her family moves a lot — saying they usually live in a place for a few years and trash it — that her parents are often gone, and once even says her mother sends her to the Tanner house as punishment, because her being grounded at home is only a punishment for her parents. Though it’s often played off as her life being eccentric, it’s pretty clear that Kimmy doesn’t have a stable support system at home and is often neglected by her parents. It’s also clear that she finds a home with the Tanners that she doesn’t have with her own family, which makes their treatment of her feel mean-spirited rather than funny.

'Fuller House' Fails Kimmy

Stephanie (Jodie Sweetin) smiling at Kimmy (Andrea Barber) in Fuller House
Image via Netflix

Fuller House tries to right some of these wrongs. We see that she has a somewhat better relationship with Danny, Joey, and Jesse in the series, and they act as father figures to her at times. She and Stephanie seem to have mostly put aside their feuds from the first series and grow close, so close that Kimmy offers to be a surrogate for Stephanie! On the surface, it seems that Fuller House stopped the Kimmy hate. But it didn’t. It simply changed the way it was presented.

Instead of outright calling Kimmy annoying or obnoxious, they simply show her as stupid and immature. Season 5’s “Be Yourself, Free Yourself” is a great example of this. Kimmy fills in for the receptionist at D.J.’s veterinary office, and it’s immediately shown that Kimmy is incapable of the most basic tasks of answering phones, organizing files, and keeping to appointment schedules and makes awful decisions, like eating dog treats and canceling every appointment in order to hold a “bark mitzvah.” This is not only a mean-spirited portrayal of her character, but a ridiculous and out of character one as well. Kimmy owns a business, and a successful one at that! She would understand how important schedules and busy days are, she would know how to answer phones, and she would know how to organize paperwork, but Fuller House instead uses her as the comedic relief, the butt of the joke, even when it doesn’t actually line up with what the show tells us about her.

There is also her relationship with her parents, which is touched briefly upon in the final season. Given their absence in Full House — and their neglect and absence in Kimmy’s life in general — it would have been a great time to explore Kimmy’s relationship with them a little more and how it has impacted her adult life, especially as a wife and mother when she lacked a positive model of those roles in her own family. It feels like Fuller House goes out of its way to deprive Kimmy of truly heartfelt and emotional scenes that could have made the series feel less like a total repeat of Full House and more like a modernized, grown up sequel that isn’t afraid to hit on hard topics.

That isn’t to say the two series are devoid of any sweet moments for Kimmy, but by the time Fuller House came out, it was definitely time to nip the Kimmy bullying in the bud and flesh out everyone’s favorite next door neighbor.